dead babies on coke

When I was in Sydney, I caught up with a graffiti writer from the DBOC (Dropping Bombs on City/ Dead Babies on Coke) crew. Like any other scene, graffiti in Sydney has it's own nuances. One of its peculiarities is different crews fighting each other, and even random strangers beating the

DBOC in the house!

hell out of writers. Actually talking to a renowned writer can be a bit daunting; I get the impression that if you ask the wrong thing, BAM!, he or she will smack you in the gob and write "toy" on your forehead while you cry. Now I think about it, it's a lot like diplomacy with North Korea.
Under the condition of anonymity, one of the members of DBOC showed me a couple of their walls, including one in a squat that smelled like the inside of a tonton (one of those two legged things from The Empire Strikes Back). I asked him a few questions about graffiti and relevant cultural associations.
Your crew is international, yeah?
Part of the crew is in Australia, another part is in Austria and other parts of Europe.
If you're just a kid, how do you start doing graffiti?
Usually you start in your local area. You form a tight group with a few friends. A lot of people talk shit over the internet at the moment. They think that's about getting up, but they've got it all wrong. You've gotta do the groundwork before you become all social about it. Graffiti isn't a social scene.
I imagined graff writers to be like the guy on rollerskates who writes "bad" while going backwards in Michael Jackson's 'Bad' filmclip.
Sure. It's a skill that we do have but that we rarely use, just due to the fact that we like to keep it as a treat for different occasions.
I've heard all of these urban stories on graff writers doing robberies for paint. Is that true?
A lot of people steal them, I personally couldn't be fucked because I can choose the colours or whatever. I do steal them sometimes.
So what's with all the fighting?
There's a lot of trouble between crews and different writers. I haven't painted anywhere else in a solid go apart from Sydney, but I hear that Melbourne is much different. If you go over someone's wall or if someone hears that you've said something, that's what comes back on you. There's heaps of writers in Sydney, so there's a lot of tension. Too many gangsters, too many kids proving themselves by beating someone up.
I thought you'd solve all your problems through breakdancing.
[Laughs] Yeah, that'd be great. Get out there in spandex and an afro and break down your problems. I don't think it works that way. It doesn't even work that way on the walls. I try not to get too involved and just stick with my crew. It's all politics.
You were talking about the Graffiti Task Force before. How big are they?
There's a few of them. Michael Costa decided to turn the train system into a police force. He thinks he's still the Police Minister. There are big hired clowns in grey coats with questionable backgrounds running around doing random searches on people. They hardly catch anyone. They're more of a nuisance than anything.